In short, a Gu family member, 辜宗, migrated to Taiwan in 1775 and settled in LuKang. One of 辜宗's four sons, 辜礼欢 then moved south to Penang to seek and in fact found more fortune. He became the first Kapitan of the British Malaya and raised a large family with 8 sons and 3 daughters. One of them 辜安平 was sent back to China to study who eventually returned to LuKang. And in 1895, one of his grandsons 辜顯榮 (1866－1937) invited the Japanese invading force to enter Taipei to keep peace as Taipei was then being looted by the retreating Qing soldiers. In return, the Japanese rewarded him with various trading rights. Gu became immensely wealthy as a result. And this branch continues on, active in Taiwan banking and commerce to this day. It is, however, unclear as to the fate of the branch in Penang, most likely as wealthy and influential as the Taiwan branch. In stark contrast, those who stayed behind in China did not fare so well.

It should be noted that LuKang was the stronghold of 洪門天地會Hong-Men Heaven and Earth Society rebels led by Lin Shuang-Wen林爽文 (1756-1788). The 福靈宮 (pictured above) honors one of Lin's generals, Wang Shun平海大將軍“王勳”.

The activities of 洪門天地會 in Penang, reported by the British Admin in 1799, now appears a matter of course.

It depends on how you define "simplified" as there are several forms. Informal simplification has long been in use in Taiwan, for example, most people write 台灣 (occasionally in Kanji, 台湾) rather than 臺灣. Many characters were derived from traditional 草書 while some adopted from Kanji. The Japanese Kanji was also simplified after the war, e.g., 広島 replaced 廣島. PRC started their own brand of simplified, actually overly simplified Chinese in the 50s when Taiwan might have banned its use - this was unnecessary because no one could decipher those characters anyway. In Taiwan, the 50s saw a period of heightened us vs them paranoia. There was even a ban on writing horizontally from left to right, in the PRC style. It was lifted largely because of the impracticality in science which often contained English and equations. In literature and calligraphy, texts written from top down are still going from right to left, in both Taiwan and Japan. This is, however, more a tradition than politics.